Chapter 4: Siren Town (1/2)

The system sent Bai Liu the first task but his focus wasn’t on it. He fell into deep thought at the words ‘avoid being incubated.’

…Incubated? Could these statues incubate him?

Bai Liu silently noted it down and turned around to see a mermaid statue standing on the opposite side of the bed. Bai Liu saw that it was the largest merfolk statue in the room. This mermaid statue was beautiful and looked mournful as she held a tall and clean mirror in her hands. The graceful hands of the mermaid statue were the supports of this dressing mirror.

This was the only merfolk statue in the room not looking at Bai Liu. She was instead looking sadly at the mirror. In the mirror, Bai Liu was reflected and the mermaid embraced the mirror with both hands. This made it seem like she was embracing Bai Liu in the mirror and he was a bit uncomfortable.

The eyes of the mermaid statue were on the mirror. The eyebrows were drawn together, the corners of the eyes were drooping and the fish tail was weakly spread out on the ground. It was as if she was crying for the person in the mirror with a realistic expression of pity. Bai Liu looked at the mirror and the ‘self’ inside the mirror showed an eerie smile.

Bai Liu covered the mirror with a white cloth.

This degree of horror wasn’t effective for Bai Liu. He created horror games in the real world and often stayed up until two or three in the morning alone to conceive various horror scenes. Bai Liu was almost numb to the routine of the person in the mirror smiling and he didn’t feel anything.

It seemed the tourists Jeff mentioned who disappeared silently in the hotel and were never found were probably incubated by these merfolk statues. Bai Liu didn’t know exactly what ‘incubation’ was but he didn’t think it would be a good thing.

In order to be cautious, Bai Liu covered all the merfolk statues with white sheets in the hotel room, including the huge mirror. It blocked these weird gazes. It might not necessarily be useful but it was better than nothing.

Most importantly, there were so many merfolk watching him that he couldn’t sleep.

As he was covering the mirror, he ended up touching the fishtail of the mermaid statue. The fishtail wasn’t smooth and silky like marble. Rather, it was sticky and slippery like an actual fish. Bai Liu even felt the scales on the fishtail of the statue.

Bai Liu paused. After touching the statue, he smelled his fingers. There was a strong fishy smell. Yet when he approached the mermaid statue and smelled it, there wasn’t a fishy smell at all. There was only the incense of the hotel room. It might be a smell from inside the car.

…It was more likely that Bai Liu himself was exuding the fishy smell. He thought about how the merfolk statues ‘incubated’ tourists and felt a bit uncomfortable.

What could be hatched from a merfolk statue? It was probably some type of disgusting-looking fish. The word ‘incubation’ made Bai Liu think of a movie called ‘Mermaid in the Sewer.’ He had watched it two or three times for the purpose of drawing materials. Since then, he never had any fantasies about mermaid creatures.

Due to the long car journey, Bai Liu was already tired. He simply cleaned himself and fell asleep on the bed. His physical strength was consumed and he urgently needed to sleep for some time to supplement it.

In the middle of the night, Bai Liu was awakened by a dull dragging sound.

The moment he opened his eyes, he saw that the white cloth covering these merfolk had slipped and only part of them were hanging from the statues. Some of the statues covered by white cloth had only one eye exposed and their expressions seemed to have changed from divine compassion to unwillingness and spitefulness. They stared at Bai Liu motionlessly, seeming to blame him for covering them with the white cloth.

Bai Liu found that these statues seemed to be closer than before he went to bed. It was like a group of people about to gather at the table for a meal. They raised their hands while slowly gathering by his bed.

In particular, the mermaid statue holding the full-length mirror. Once Bai Liu woke up in a daze, he saw that his feet were almost touching the mirror. The huge mirror had moved toward the bed.

Bai Liu saw himself reflected in the mirror the moment he sat up.

The Bai Liu in the mirror had skin that was as pale as a rock, there were no blacks in the eyes and his eyes were surrounded by marble, cobweb-like patterns. ‘He’ smiled stiffly at the Bai Liu outside the mirror before becoming normal again. It was as if it was just Bai Liu’s illusion.

Bai Liu quietly stood up from the bed and covered these merfolk statues with the white cloth without changing expressions.

In order to prevent them from breaking free, Bai Liu also tied them tightly with rope. Then he wrapped the smaller merfolk statues in white cloth, threw them into the closet and locked it. The large statues were pushed into the bathroom and locked. His movements were as quick as a skilled kidnapper.

These things seemed to be subject to certain movement restrictions. Before Bai Liu fell asleep, these things couldn’t move. It seemed that even after he was sleeping, they needed to break free of the white cloth and see Bai Liu to move toward him. Some of the little merfolk statues covered with the white cloth didn’t take them off. They scurried around in all directions under the white cloth and didn’t gather at the bed.

Bai Liu figured out this rule and immediately increased the limit to the maximum.

Just as he finished this and clapped his hands to go to sleep, Bai Liu heard the sound of the door next to him opening and closing, as well as creeping footsteps.

Bai Liu couldn’t help pausing as he was going to lay back down on the bed. The four rooms he booked were all adjacent and Andre and Jeff lived in the rooms to his left and right. In order to protect (?) himself, Bai Liu deliberately arranged Lucy in the furthest room from him.

The sound of the door opening and closing came from the left which was Jeff’s room. Bai Liu got up from the bed and looked out into the corridor through the peephole. He saw Jeff standing in the corridor, looking around. After confirming there was no one in the corridor, he sneaked down the stairs of the hotel.

Bai Liu frowned. Jeff wasn’t sleeping in the middle of the night?

Bai Lu was going to open the door and take a look when he saw the doorknob of the door Jeff had closed start to slowly turn again. It seemed that someone else was going to follow Jeff out of his room.